Calculating the Value of Pain & Suffering Damages in an Injury Claim

By
Dean Law Firm
|February 28, 2018

After you have suffered a serious personal injury due to the negligence
of a third party, you have the right to pursue damages to help you recover
lost finances related to the accident and injury. For the most part, people
know they need to file an injury claim to recover the cost of hospitalization,
emergency medical care, and lost wages. All of these damages can be calculated
in a somewhat straightforward fashion by adding receipts, bills, and missing
paystubs together.

However, economic damages that can be printed on a receipt are not the
only type of damage you can probably recover after an accident that was
not your fault. You are likely able to pursue noneconomic damages for
your undue pain and suffering. Yet, if noneconomic damages are not something
you can measure easily with bills, how are they measured? What do insurers
and personal injury attorneys use when calculating damages for pain and
suffering?

Putting a Price on Pain for Your Gain

Overall, there is no universal standard for calculating noneconomic damages.
This is why they are often so hotly contested by insurance companies who
do not want to pay out anything beyond the bare minimum – and they
would like to avoid doing even that. There is a widely accepted way to
measure pain and suffering damages, though.

Many injury attorneys take the known economic damages and multiply it by
a “pain factor” or “intensity scale” between 1.5
and 10 to get the noneconomic damage amount. By referencing doctors’
notes and reviewing how an injury or accident has negatively impacted
the plaintiff, an injury attorney can try to decide a fair multiplier.
For example, someone who slips, falls, and dislocates a shoulder might
have a low multiplier, perhaps 2 – but someone who gets hit by a
drunk driver and becomes paralyzed may have a high multiplier, possibly up to 10.

The goal is trying to reach a noneconomic damage number that a court will
approve, or that the insurance company will agree to in a settlement.
A careful calculation can expedite the claim and get money to the plaintiff
sooner than later.

Call Our Midland Personal Injury Attorneys – (432) 214-8125

Dean Law Firm and our
personal injury lawyers in Midland have more than 20 years of total legal experience with
an intentional focus on plaintiffs’ cases. If you or a loved one
have suffered due to the injuries caused by a third party, talk to us
about filing a claim for a compensation amount that includes a fair consideration
for your noneconomic damages.

The information on this website is for general information purposes only.
Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any individual
case or situation. This information is not intended to create, and receipt
or viewing does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship.